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daria42 writes "Remember how the mass piracy lawsuits common in the U.S. are now coming to Australia? Of course you do. Well, now Australia's Government has come out backing the legal process which makes them possible — and is even promising to streamline it. Anti-piracy organisations will be jumping for joy — but I'm not sure how popular the move will be with the rest of the population."

Really who is this government? Not the one we voted for that's for sure. We voted for the Labor party not the Coalition, not the party that supports corporations, not the party that supported bigger governments, and best of all the party that said quite plainly there will never be a carbon tax.

Why is it not possible to fire a government that has flat out lied on every question posed to them in their job interview?

Hey mr content producer, you start selling the content I want here in Australia (on DVD preferably) and I will stop pirating your content from YouTube and BitTorrent and start paying for it.

I cant find ANY of the Yahoo Serious films on DVD in any local store for example. Nor can I find any seasons of The Real Ghostbusters past season 1. Nor can I find many of the cool documentaries (both film and TV) that I want to buy on DVD (such as those from the History Channel).

Actually, you often can't. The content industry has pushed for region coding, meaning that you can't import US DVDs and watch them in Australia. Australia is Region 4 - most DVDs get a Region 1 release, then a Region 2 release a bit later, and maybe a Region 4 release if the content producers can be bothered.

One of the changes that I would love to see made to copyright law is a refusal to distribute count made a valid affirmative defence for non-commercial copyright infringement. Copyright is a bargain between society and the creators giving them exclusive distribution rights (for a limited time) in exchange for publishing their work. If they refuse to publish it, then they should not be given the protection of copyright. This would give the content industry a very strong incentive to start making worldwide downloads available as soon as their work is ready, rather than releasing DVDs in the USA 6 months after a film shows, in Europe a year after, and in Australia eventually (maybe).

One of the changes that I would love to see made to copyright law is a refusal to distribute count made a valid affirmative defence for non-commercial copyright infringement.

To make this fully effective, you need to make the legislation quite complex, or there will be loopholes. If it applies only when they fail to distribute it in your region, they'll just release it on Betamax. If they have to release it in a common format, they'll release it on DVD, but crippled somehow: unskippable 30-minute intro, Swahili-language-only, etc.

Two simpler alternative changes to copyright law that accomplish the same goal:

* Allow commercial format-shifting. So someone can start a business buying US DVDs, ripping and re-burning them as region-free, destroying the originals, and exporting them to Australia. For extra credit, allow modification, so the business can remove unskippable intro sequences, etc.

* Compulsory licensing. Anyone can start a business selling DVDs of a movie, provided that they give 50% of their revenue to the copyright holder. Album covers already work much like this.

Either of these allow new businesses to bring copyrighted works to untapped markets (which ensures that someone will do it), while still giving the content creators a cut.

The copyright model is broken and has been massaged by large corporations into a licence to print money. Copyright should only apply to individuals and for limited periods of time. Nothing created while my father has lived has ever gone into the public domain which was one of the key reasons why copyright was granted. How does 25 years for individuals and 5 years for companies sound? That way the price that they pay for copyright protection is and end date to protection, if the corporations don't like it they can use proprietary mechanisms and once they're broken they can't claim copyright. It would also force companies to licence copyright management from individuals rather than buying them outright.